A campus novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman's final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.
A remarkable coming-of-age story that examines sexual politics, power and lust and the sometimes murky nature of romantic encounters ... The unfortunate final section, with contemporary Isabel trying to track down Connelly all these years later, serves no real purpose. But those confusing pages do not detract from the power of the rest of the narrative.
At its heart, My Last Innocent Year is a campus novel, and it hits many of the same notes as classics of the genre ... By the end of Florin’s masterful bildungsroman, our narrator is not somebody’s daughter, she is not someone’s victim, she is not someone’s lover. She is Isabel, and she defines her own story.
An intimate, insightful novel ... My Last Innocent Year is written with confessional intimacy verging on stream-of-consciousness storytelling. It’s softly delivered coming-of-age themes pertain to such questions as individuality versus conformity, desire versus boundaries, and passion versus practicality along the road of growing into one’s own. Sure to please YA readers and well beyond, it’s a poignant tale that doesn’t shy from sharp edges, a universal story both timeless and timely.
